Topics and skills covered in the course include:

• Engineering contexts and challenges – types of engineering and engineering projects, economic, social and environmental impacts of engineering; emerging technologies; energy and efficiency.
• Systems and control – the systems approach to engineering; energy systems; open and closed loop control; two state control; proportional control incorporating negative feedback.
• Electronic systems – analogue electronics, including Ohm’s law, Kirchoff’s laws, resistors in series and parallel, electrical power, voltage dividers, and transistor switching circuits, including BJT and MOSFET functions, transistors as drivers, op-amp functions and circuit design; digital electronics including logic circuits (AND, OR, NOT, NAND, NOR, XOR), truth tables, Boolean expressions and NAND equivalents; microcontrollers including high-level programming techniques (including pulse width modulation, ramping, incremental counts and other logic operations).
• Mechanical systems– motion and forces; mechanisms and drive systems; pneumatic systems (including cascading, group air and electrical control); beams and frame structures; and material properties (including analysis of test results).

Higher is assessed by completing an engineering assignment worth 40% of the final mark. The remaining 60% is assessed by a written examination.

Expectations

• Engineering Science is recommended as a pupil choice along with Mathematics, Physics and/or Computing Science – it should not be seen as a replacement for other science subjects.
• Strong skills in Mathematics are required to succeed in Engineering Science.
• There will be regular past paper question homework.
• Meeting deadlines and being resilient are important features of being successful in this course – you will be expected to carry out tasks in your own time.
• For entry to Higher, pupils will normally have a National 5 pass at grades A-C.

Pupils can access all the notes for this course on Glow within the Engineering Science Microsoft Team. You can find the course plan below.

• SQA - Higher Engineering Science
• BBC Bitesize - Higher Engineering Science
• BrightRED - Higher Engineering Science
• Higher Engineering Science in a Nutshell